Q: How do southern identities and cultures understand and navigate climate stressors? ~ from the NCA5 Zero-Order Draft We miss the streams that once teemed with trout and salamander; salt marshes, mudflats brimming with snails and cockle shells, ribboned jellies of toad-spawn slick in ditches or ponds. Farmers stand in soybean fields: stalks shortened from drought, white or purple flowers shed before they can start green pods and fill out seeds. In these islands around which waters warm and rise then sour, wild ponies fester with pythium sores. Elsewhere, a heat wave kills mussels and clams on rocky shelves. Each summer, tourists come by car or boat, plane or train. Beaches fleck with suntanned bodies and striped umbrellas. They pull white flesh from steamed fish plates and squeeze the juice of lemons on oysters sprung fresh from their shells. Meanwhile, ships the size of 3 football fields inch into our ports, carrying 16,000 containers filled with food, machines, synthetics. One vessel uses 80,000 gallons of marine fuel per day. From afar, the ships look like they're only carrying multicolored stacks of Lego bricks.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.